Date:         Fri, 25 Jan 2013 13:33:24 -0800
Reply-To:     Stuart MacMillan <stuartmacm@GMAIL.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Stuart MacMillan <stuartmacm@GMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Don't clip your replies!-- now how to search the archives
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

David has it right, of course.

If you have trouble getting good search results, here is what works well for
me:

I start by leaving either the keyword or subject blank, and I usually add
"authors" like "Haynes," "Daryl," "Beierl," "Wilford," "BenT" "Alistair" and
other established contributors to the search criteria.  Then I'll reverse
the keyword or subject blank entry and run it again.  All my electrical
issue searches include the author "Beierl," for obvious reasons! This limits
the results, increases the quality, and these folks usually include the
original post like David suggests.

For example, I just ran a search for the subject "thermostat" from 2010 and
left the end date blank. I got 140 hits.  Ran it again with "Haynes" as
author, and I got 11.  Making "thermostat" the keyword with the subject
blank resulted in 71 posts from Dennis, and I can quickly glean all of the
expertise on thermostats he has contributed in the past three years (stick
with dealer or Wahler as he reiterated recently).  This whole exercise took
about 5 minutes, and no search took more than a second or so.

Archive searches work extremely well when you refine your criteria this way
and searches seem to be much, much faster now than they used to be anyway.
I depend on them!

BTW, "netiquette" only appears 7 times since 2010.

Stuart